Weekly Brief: Less (users) is more?

You may have been lucky (unlucky?) enough to have received a rather slick email announcing the Hinge dating app redesign last week. It heralded a new UI and business model: Hinge officially want you to delete Hinge… after finding the love of your life, of course! The “app designed to be deleted” may seem a little counterproductive on the face of it, but it’s a marketing plug that seems to be making some headway. Twitter has also been embodying the adage of “doing more with less” as they eked out promising advertising sales in Q1 despite a drop in their overall user count. No matter what Donald Trump may have to say on the topic, it would appear Twitter’s efforts to clean up their act have gone over well with consumers, or “Daily Active Users” to use the parlance. This model of appealing to a smaller, loyal client base by clamping down on internet nastiness seems to have also struck a cord with Apple. CEO Tim Cook not only introduced a range of features to promote “digital wellness” at the WWDC, but also heavily advocated switching off push notifications. Effectively: aiming to get people off their iPhones.

Call it being a responsible internet citizen or creative frugality, the bottom line is the same; less is more when it comes to tech strategy in 2019!